Israel – דיויד סטברו

Hélène Cixous: ‘I Accept Israel’s Existence, but I Don’t Identify With It’

The pioneering French feminist thinker returns to her family’s roots in Germany and Algeria in her Berman Prize-winning book. In an interview with Haaretz, she discusses Netanyahu’s government and why she still wants Israel to survive.

Published in Haaretz: Hélène Cixous: 'I Accept Israel's Existence, but I Don't Identify With It' – Art & Culture

Three years after Hélène Cixous was born in Algeria, she recounts in an interview with Haaretz, “I was dispossessed of my Frenchness” as part of the anti-Jewish legislation of the Vichy regime in 1940. “My father was a doctor and was forbidden to practice medicine. Our rights were stripped from us by the French government. Was I French? No. I despised France, and some of my suspicion toward it still exists.

“France has still not truly managed to confront its sins. This continues to rot French politics to this day. At least Germany had the courage to confront the horror for which it was responsible. That is important. When I was a child, racism and antisemitism raged around me, and I directed myself to oppose these dark forces.”

Zero Jews

“And zero at the end of the war. Zero, that’s enormous, and according to the Nazis, too much, an innumerable number… It had been a long time since Osnabrück was without a Jew, there were zero Jews in the charming streets and around the solid, square body of the cathedral of Zerosnabrück”.

This passage from Hélène Cixous’s book Osnabrück Station to Jerusalem captures the essence of her latest work. Part memoir, part family history, the book combines the great Jewish tragedy with philosophical reflections on Jewish existence.

As is her custom, Cixous employs her creative powers in writing not only in relation to her characters but also toward language itself. Osnabrück, the German city from which her mother’s family originated, becomes “Zerosnabrück” after it is emptied of its Jews. In 1934, 435 Jews lived there, Cixous writes; after the war, the number was zero.

Both historically and magically, the city is linked to Jerusalem: both become landscapes of memory and longing, both are inhabited by the living and the dead and stand at the center of the attempt to understand what it means to be Jewish when one’s world is shaped by displacement, catastrophe and the search for a home.

Osnabrück acquires an almost mythical status throughout the book. For Cixous, it is not just “Zerosnabrück”; it is also “the Paris of Lower Saxony.” Like Jerusalem, it is both real and a surreal dream where living characters meet the dead, and where the book itself becomes a character and speaks with its author. All of this occurs across timelines and locations that jump between the Holocaust in Europe and Algeria and the Middle East, incorporating biblical references, Greek mythology, European classics and Shakespearean tragedy.

All of this greatly resonated with the Swedish Berman Prize for Literature committee, which selected Cixous and her book – published in French in 2016 and in English in 2020, and not yet translated into Hebrew – as the 2026 prize winner. The award ceremony will take place in October. It is one of the most prestigious literary prizes, including a cash award of one million Swedish kronor, approximately 320,000 shekels, and is awarded to writers whose work illuminates Jewish life while also addressing universal human questions.

The prize was founded in 2020 by Swedish philanthropists Thomas and Catharina Berman, through a private donation intended to support Jewish culture and strengthen Jewish literary tradition. Thomas Berman said that the rise in antisemitism was one of the reasons for establishing the prize.

The first recipient was David Grossman, for his body of work, and other recipients include Hungarian author Péter Nádas, Russian-Jewish author, poet and journalist Maria Stepanova, and Jewish-Guatemalan author Eduardo Halfon. This year, the prize committee praised Osnabrück Station to Jerusalem, describing it as a work that “traces the void left by the displaced, maps absence and gives voice to those who can no longer speak.”

A Wonderful, Mysterious Place

“Osnabrück is like Jerusalem: one must go there, one must present oneself before its faces, one must let it speak and advance toward its language as before the monster Behemoth about which God boasts to Job, one must touch it with one’s fingers, one’s feet; one cannot know it from a distance. It’s like the sea: even from two yards away one doesn’t know it, one must throw oneself into its arms yelling.”

Cixous was born in Oran, Algeria, in 1937 to a German-Jewish mother who was a midwife and a Sephardi-Jewish father. For more than six decades, she has addressed questions of identity, language and memory. She is best known as the author of the essay The Laugh of the Medusa (1975), one of the foundational texts in modern feminist literary theory, which established her status as an influential thinker and one of the mothers of post-structuralist feminism.

Cixous worked closely with Jacques Derrida, who referred to her as “the greatest living writer in our language.” In her early 30s, in 1968, she participated in the Paris student revolt and in the founding of Paris 8 University, an institution intended to serve as an alternative to the traditional French academic environment. In 1974, the university became home to a center for women’s studies founded by Cixous, the first of its kind in Europe. She also maintained a lifelong interest in questions concerning her Jewish history. These questions are at the heart of Osnabrück Station to Jerusalem.

Is her book intended to give voice to those who can no longer speak? “When I write, it’s not I who has intentions, it’s the book,” she replies. “The book has its urgency and it doesn’t aim at this or that consideration. It’s true that it gives a voice to the void, like everything else that has been written, because of the huge field of tragic events. But writing is always giving a voice.

“In this case, it’s all somehow in the title, it’s a singular experience, of my relation to history, to politics, to tragedy. The voice of my writing is a mixture of tragedy and comedy and my material is partly autobiographical, partly theater and the obsession that led me to the book was going to Osnabrück.”

The obsession she describes is preservation through family dialogue, fantasy and therapy. Throughout Osnabrück Station to Jerusalem, the dead refuse to disappear, and the book seems full of ghosts – mothers, grandmothers, murdered relatives and those born long after the war, vanished neighbors and destroyed communities. All reappear in dreams, conversations, fragments of language and works of art. The living and the dead merge into one another. The visit to Osnabrück thus becomes not only a journey to a specific place but an encounter with the voices of a lost world.

The city that gives the book its title occupies a remarkable place in Cixous’s imagination. “It’s a place that no one knows. Even the Germans don’t know it,” she says, “but it’s a historic city, one of the two where the Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648, ending the Thirty Years’ War. It’s a wonderful, mysterious, fantastic place which fascinated me as a child. I was born to a mother who came from Osnabrück and lived in Oran, an Algerian city which was then part of a French colony. I saw Osnabrück as kind of a light in the distance, just like Jerusalem is seen by so many people.”

She recalls visiting Germany repeatedly with her mother and grandmother while carefully avoiding the city itself. “We went to Berlin, to Cologne, to Bonn, but never Osnabrück. It became something I wondered about – what’s wrong with Osnabrück? Why do we never go there?” She remembers how an official invitation from the city itself arrived for her mother and aunt to come back to the city for a visit. A discussion then began between the two women, which started as a conversation about hotels but became an argument about history and forgiveness.

Eventually, her mother decided to go. “This generation is not our enemy,” Cixous recalls her mother saying. “We don’t have to forgive them. We have to go on and accept the reality of history”. Years later, when Cixous suggested to her mother that they return to Algeria together, her mother refused, explaining: “In Germany, they invited me and asked me for forgiveness. In Algeria, I was kicked out after helping thousands of Algerians come into this world as a midwife.” Only after her mother’s death at the age of 103 did Cixous herself finally travel to Osnabrück.

Since then, she says, she has become “a kind of honorary citizen” there. When she spoke there, she reminded the city’s residents that peace itself can never be taken for granted, and that her own presence is conditional. “If in twenty years you become Nazi, as it sometimes happens,” she said, “it won’t be possible.” This remark captures the central tension in her book: the best and worst possibilities remain simultaneously present.

Does the book represent a return to Jewish roots after decades primarily spent on gender and feminist theory?

“Things are not that simple. The Jewish theme has always been there in a way,” she says and adds, smiling, that “I have a history in resisting the forces of evil. I grew up in colonial Algeria in a family opposed to racism and colonialism, while simultaneously becoming victims of antisemitism. I have, of course, always been on the side of the colonized.

“This wasn’t easy in Algeria where the colonizers were French. I hated the French since I was born. My family was in a situation of being part of a small minority of those who were strictly hostile to racism and colonialism. But this was not perceived in Algeria. From their perspective, we were supposed to be French.

“Later, when I was 18, I arrived in France, and I became ‘re-Frenched,’ although I doubt if one can really become re-Frenched and the truth is that I feel like I never really arrived in France. Then the social and political landscape changed, it was totally foreign, and gradually in two or three years, I started to think that antisemitism isn’t the question any more. On the other hand, I got this horrible feeling that they hate women here".

“It wasn’t an issue of class – it was men against women. Everywhere in society. The urgent fight wasn’t for Jews; it was for women. This is a fight of thousands of years. It’s still that way and it will go on. But every now and then, there’s another cause that becomes the main one for a specific period, and you have to decide, like a general of an army, where your forces are most needed. In the last few years, for example, it happened with Ukraine. And then Israel and Gaza came back again. Sometimes, you need to divide your strength.”

Hesitation Is Food for Fascism

“I can be many things, but being Jewish is always there,” Cixous says. She explains that she can easily make peace with her identity as a woman. “It may be divided into all kinds of tendencies but it’s basic, it’s primitive.” Her Jewish identity and her relation to Zionism and Israel is a different matter.

“It goes back to my mother,” she says. “She grew up in the days of a ‘beautiful Zionism’ – the dreams of young socialist Jews. But she resisted because of her story, which was against anything nationalist. Her father was enrolled in the German army and was killed as a German Jew, and so her way of looking at history was very rational.

“I was a girl when Israel was created, and I saw in Algiers the first emissaries trying to get Jews to go to Israel. I was prudent to that. I immediately thought that I wasn’t going to feel at home with a movement that unfraternally became colonialist. It was unavoidable. So, of course, I understand the creation of Israel, of course I was moved by it. But it couldn’t escape colonialism. “I came from a country where the Arabs were colonized. So, I just watched Israel. I never thought that belonging to what they called ‘the Diaspora,’ which we’re not, is negative. It is a way of being a citizen of the universe. My mother went to Israel to visit the part of her family that moved there. I refrained from doing that. I thought that I shouldn’t go if I don’t identify with Israel. I didn’t want to just be an observer. I like to be involved.”

Couldn’t what you call colonialism also be understood as Jews returning to their homeland?

“I could understand that the emissaries thought that they are returning to their homeland. I could also understand those like the members of my family who escaped the destruction of the Holocaust to Palestine which later became Israel. But for me, this wasn’t the only way. I thought we could be free and choose, and we had many ways to react to these terrible events. I accept Israel, but don’t identify with it. And this is the case for many people”.

Cixous’s attitude to Israel is complex. She doesn’t accept Jewish nationalism, but also doesn’t deny the tragic dimension of Jewish history and the antisemitism that led to Zionism and the establishment of the Jewish state. She is also well aware of how people react to disasters, and in this case, it is a central part of the story of the exodus from Europe and the establishment of Israel.

One of the most powerful themes in your book is the inability to recognize an approaching disaster – as happened in Osnabrück with the rise of the Nazis. How can this be understood?

“The hesitation when a radical change in one’s life is involved is common. In our days this mechanism of the human psyche is obvious when we’re facing the possibility that extreme right fascism will win the presidential elections in France. France is a very political place so everywhere I see people talking to each other about our next elections saying things like ‘next year in hell.’ They discuss what they will do on election day. Some say it’s not going to happen, others say it will happen if we don’t unite. All these discussions are taking place everywhere, and you can see the human soul hesitating”. For her, this hesitation is dangerous. “It’s the food for fascism,” she says.

The contrast within her own family remains instructive. “My grandmother stayed and didn’t leave Osnabrück until after Kristallnacht. My mother, who was a young woman, left the moment she smelled the stink of fascism. She never hesitated.” Other family members perished.

In Israel’s current war, there is a place where gender, sexual violence, and Middle Eastern politics collide in a tragic way: the sexual violence committed during the Hamas attacks of October 7. Many Israelis felt deeply alienated and outraged by the way parts of the international feminist movement appeared unwilling to express sympathy for Jewish victims. What do you think about this?

“This is a monstrous event. It will remain in history and the consequences go deeper and further than can be imagined. To the horror of my kind of people, it divided even the feminists. There was something hideous about the fact that when French Jews reacted passionately to that horrible event, some parts of the French feminist movement were so anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian that they had no sympathy for the Jewish women who were affected.”

Cixous described this as a moral failure. “These are the perversions of the way people identify with one cause and exclude others. It’s horrible.” Her own position, she says, was unequivocal. “For me, of course, there were no hesitations. This was a terrible crime. Hamas is a cruel, hateful movement like many other movements in the Arab world. The whole world is a victim of Hamas. But now, so many people, countries and movements are also victims to the blindness and craziness of the Netanyahu government.

“The time has come, and it came a long time ago, to stop being colonial and accept the fact that others also have rights. History has decided that this piece of the planet Earth should be shared by Jews and Palestinians.” She worries that Israel is exhausting reservoirs of international goodwill built over generations. “They’re self-destructing and they’re destroying the capital, the inheritance of sympathy and understanding from others.”

This is criticism stemming from concern rather than detachment. “I would like Israel to survive,” she concludes, “but it’s alienating the countries that support it. It’s tragic”.

For Cixous, Israel is not only its politics; it is also the story of exile and migration. “Each migration has its own structure. It requires such courage. It requires giving up and starting again. That’s one of the reasons that I understand the creation of Israel, and literature gives these experiences their deepest human meaning. I really admire Israeli literature which deals with this and the great writers who give these events their deep humanity.” When asked for examples, Cixous says that she loves the works of Aharon Appelfeld and enormously admires David Grossman.

The Gatekeepers

Toward the end of the interview, Cixous reflects on the present moment. “Very often I think that what is happening now, I have already lived through as a young girl, in the 1930s,” she says, but adds that history never repeats itself exactly. “Obviously, technology, the fact that we may be dispossessed by ourselves with AI, is unimaginable. We – who read, who still want to think, the guardians of art – we have to strengthen that part of mankind. Whenever a European country goes the way that Hitler’s Germany went, it contaminates everything, it becomes possible, it seduces other countries. We can be thrown into a period like the one of the plague.

“People keep saying that Europe is weak, divided and ungenerous. That’s why Europe needs to have an army. In the past, it went against its humanistic principles, but this pacifism doesn’t work. It’s not enough to just be on the side of peace and diplomacy. No, when arms are used, you have to resist with arms.”

And beside an army, what’s the role of public intellectuals in such times?

“The concept of public intellectuals is a recent invention. It started with the Dreyfus affair – and it’s extinct. There are no important public intellectuals. There may be media intellectuals. It doesn’t mean that it won’t happen again. I don’t know. Something may come back, but these wonderful moments of light, like the one in 1968, are extinct.”

Cixous’s concern about recurring patterns of extremism and hatred, and the temptation to underestimate danger, runs like a thread throughout Osnabrück Station to Jerusalem, which deals with how people remember and how they forget. The Berman Prize jury praised the book for giving voice to the silenced. In fact, it does more than that. It revives lost worlds – like those of Osnabrück and Jerusalem. In doing so, Cixous poses a long series of questions about memory, reality, exile and belonging. Most remain open. At 89, she offers no definitive answers.

The Swedish Left Party’s letters reveal what amateurs they are

The first objection to Swedish MPs sending romantic letters of solidarity to people convicted of murder and terrorism is, of course, a moral one. The second concerns poor judgment. But the third is about something else: amateurism, writes Israeli journalist David Stavrou.

Published in Swedish in Kvartal: V:s brev avslöjar vilka amatörer de är – Kvartal

In the space of just a few days, journalists Sofie Löwenmark, Nathalie Rothschild and Inas Hamdan published investigations showing how members of the Swedish parliament had sent letters of solidarity to Palestinian prisoners convicted of very serious terrorism offenses and had participated in an organized campaign in which several of the recipients are serving life sentences for attacks against civilians.

In 2023, SVT revealed that aid money from the Left Party’s international organization had gone to a project with links to the DFLP, an organization that participated in the October 7 massacre. The following year, prominent Left Party figure Kristofer Lundberg was expelled after expressing support for the terrorist-designated PFLP. In Malmö, Orwa Kadoura left the party following criticism over antisemitic messages. In 2025, MP Lorena Delgado Varas shared a classic antisemitic conspiracy image, and as recently as June this year, the Left Party removed a large number of candidates who had praised Hamas’s October 7 attack, spread Holocaust denial and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories.

All of this is, of course, serious. By now, it is clear that the Left Party has a problem with romanticizing terrorism and spreading antisemitism and conspiracy theories. This can no longer be dismissed as anecdotal. Every time you think rock bottom has been reached, another investigation appears with new revelations. But precisely for that reason, it is almost no longer interesting to discuss this as a question of values. Left Party members are free to believe whatever they want. The truly interesting issue is something else.

Politics is not merely an ideological arena. Politics is a profession. There are laws, practices, institutions and rules of the game. And then there is what in British politics is sometimes described as simply not done – things that may not actually be prohibited but that politicians nevertheless know not to do. It is like any other profession. Surgeons do not operate on gut feeling. Judges do not rule according to whom they instinctively like best. Even a passionate politician is expected to be able to control that passion long enough to do the job.

The Left Party’s explanation in the latest affair illustrates the problem. The party secretary has said that the names came from the Palestinian Association of Sweden and that the Left Party carried out no checks of its own. “There had been a mistake in the fact-checking,” MP Ilona Szatmári Waldau wrote. Nooshi Dadgostar has repeatedly resorted to variations of the same defense during the scandals of recent years. In June, she referred to the large number of Left Party representatives – more than 4,000 – and stressed that those exposed represented only a small proportion. She then said that “there are occasions when people turn up whom you haven’t kept track of.” She promised to tighten the party’s procedures, but that is clearly an almost impossible task, since many other Left Party members defend people who have expressed support for terrorist organizations.

If a blue-haired 17-year-old activist sends a love letter to an ideologically motivated murderer he saw on TikTok, perhaps he can get away with shrugging his shoulders or shouting along with Rage Against the Machine: “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” But members of parliament are not teenagers. They are adults, and adults are expected to evaluate their sources critically and ask questions. What does it look like when we become fixated on prisoners from a single international conflict while ignoring others? What diplomatic, trade-policy and security-policy consequences could our statements have? Which people and organizations are we legitimizing?

Is that boring? Does it involve compromise? Perhaps even moral coruption? Perhaps – if you live in a syndicalist collective, eat out of tin cans beneath posters of “freedom fighters” and say that “when the forest is felled, the chips will fly”. But the Left Party’s MPs are well-paid public officials who participate in – and enjoy all the privileges and perks that come with – professional politics.

That means it is part of the job to investigate the people and organizations you cooperate with, read court judgments, speak to embassies, diplomats, experts and lawyers, ask what is disputed and what has been established, and understand the consequences of your own symbolic politics. For example, when a professional politician becomes involved in another country’s prison system by writing a letter, they must understand how the people they are writing to are perceived by their victims, as well as understand another society’s sensitivities and collective trauma.

To a Swede, Ahmad al-Moghrabi or Ibrahim Abu Mokh may be unfamiliar names on a list of “Palestinian prisoners.” To an Israeli, those same names may signify deadly suicide attacks against civilians, murdered children or a young conscript who was kidnapped on his way home and never returned. You do not have to accept Israel’s policies in the West Bank or agree with the Israeli courts. You only need to be able to imagine the reverse situation. Imagine if foreign parliamentarians wrote to Jackie Arklöv and praised his “courage and perseverance” without checking the judgment against him. The first Swedish response wouldn't be a complex debate about Scandinavian geo-politics, it would be: Have you even bothered to find out who this person is?

This kind of disregard for the rules of politics – in which passionate conviction is allowed to cloud judgment and consequences and basic due diligence are ignored – has a name. It is called populism.

For many years, the Sweden Democrats have struggled with a similar transition – from a protest movement to a party with influence over the state. As part of that process, the party has run internal training programs under the title The Road to Power (Vägen till makten), although there is, of course, no reason to romanticize the results. SD continues to be plagued by recurring scandals. A training course cannot magically erase a political culture.

And this is where the parallel with the Left Party becomes even more uncomfortable. V has already tried the educational route. Following several antisemitism scandals, in the spring of 2025 the party invited its members to a two-hour training session on antisemitism. Every member received an invitation. Yet one year later, the party found itself with 25 candidates removed from its lists following revelations involving, among other things, precisely antisemitism. As the Swedish elections draw closer, the party is finding it increasingly difficult to convince voters that sympathy for terrorists, conspiracy theories and antisemitism among its politicians and activists is a bug. In its case, it seems much more like a feature.

Norwegian Holocaust Center Events on Nakba and Gaza War Draw Ire From Israeli Embassy

Israel's embassy in Norway condemned the events organized by the Norwegian Holocaust Center in Oslo, saying they 'legitimize antisemitism.' The center said the aim is to 'understand shadows of historical traumas without equating them'

Published in Haaretz: Norwegian Holocaust Center Events on Nakba, Gaza War Draw Ire From Israeli Embassy – Jewish World

Israel's Embassy in Norway called for an independent Holocaust studies center in Oslo to cancel two upcoming events that it claims are a "grotesque distortion of Holocaust memory."

As part of a lecture series titled "In Shadow of War – The Way Forward," the Norwegian Center for Holocaust Studies and Religious Minorities is hosting two events with the University of Oslo this spring. The first event, which took place on Thursday, was a lecture by Prof. Nadim Khoury titled "Nakba and Holocaust as cultural traumas."

According to the University of Oslo's website ahead of the event, Khoury – a Palestinian professor of international studies at the Innland Norway University of Applied Sciences – "will trace their trajectories since 1948 and explore how they are intertwined and how the tensions between them are shaping the path forward in Israeli and Palestinian lives."

A second event, scheduled for June 3, will feature Israeli historian and Brown University professor Omer Bartov, whose contributions to Holocaust scholarship were recognized by Yad Vashem in 2019.

In an April 28 X post, Israel's embassy in Norway called on the HL Center to cancel the events "immediately."

"The Norwegian Holocaust Center's decision to host events drawing parallels between the Holocaust, the 'Nakba' and the war in Gaza is a grotesque distortion of Holocaust memory," the post read. The embassy added that the center has chosen political activism over historical responsibility and it called upon it to cancel the events and stop "legitimizing antisemitism in its modern forms."

Addressing the criticism in a social media post, the HL Center explained that it invited academics from different environments and backgrounds as speakers in order to "address and reflect on challenging topics without ending up in polarized debates where constructive nuance tends to disappear."

HL Center director Jan Heiret told Haaretz that the event with Khoury was supposed to follow another event hosting Martin Auerbach, former director of the National Israeli Center for Psychosocial Support of Survivors of the Holocaust and the Second Generation (AMCHA). Auerbach couldn't come due to uncertainty around the ongoing conflict with Iran, but Heiret said the center will make another attempt to host him in the autumn.

Heiret added that both events are meant "to find a way out of a destructive spiral of hatred, dehumanization and violence."

"We must understand the long-lasting shadows of historical traumas without equating, or even putting up, the Holocaust with the Nakba – which would be a historical distortion given the events are so different in nature, course and scope," Heiret said. "We acknowledge that the consequences for the individuals and collectives traumatized by them are interconnected, and that the denial of the trauma of the other lies at the core of the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Leif Knutsen, an activist and the chair of the Jewish Community of Norway, says the academics invited to speak at the HL Center "represent a fringe element," and that it's a recurring issue.

"The center doesn't question them; it doesn't bring anyone to balance the discussion and it doesn't present their perspectives in anything like a critical light," Knutsen said. "It's always in the same direction – one that's beyond critical to Israel. Someone should be sitting on stage and presenting an alternative point of view or at least a nuanced one."

Knutsen said Norway's Jewish population of about 2,000 is particularly vulnerable due to a sharp rise in antisemitic attitudes. In its most recent report published in early 2024, the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies documented an increase in antisemitic attitudes among Norwegians, with 11.5 percent of survey respondents having "pronounced prejudices" against Jews.

Images from Norway, 2024

"The center should be combating antisemitism rather than promoting a one-sided program," he said. "Even worse is the effect that such extreme voices have on Norwegian Jews who are being lectured about their own understanding of reality on the basis of a supposedly academic framework that completely ignores the real conditions in Norway."

According to its website, the Norwegian Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities is a research, education and documentation center intended to focus on the Holocaust and other genocides, as well as antisemitism and minority rights in Norway. The center's exhibitions receive roughly 50,000 visitors each year. It was established in 2001 using capital from a national restitution settlement over World War II between Norway and the country's Jewish community.

The center has previously faced criticism for its programming. In a letter sent in September 2024, more than 100 Norwegian Holocaust survivors and their descendants accused the center of failing to use "its mandate to combat the hostility we experience," and that instead of fighting antisemitism it was positioning itself as a "critic of Israel's policies and military tactics." The letter also said the center manifests "bias in its choice of experts and supporting a narrative that's negative toward Israel as a Jewish state."

In another letter from January 2025, the Norwegian branch of B'nai Brith criticized Heiret for mentioning Palestinians twice while delivering a speech on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, amid Israel's war in Gaza.

"By focusing on Gaza and Palestinian civilians who have lost their lives during the commemoration of the Holocaust and the genocide of the Jews in Europe, at a time when one-sided and anti-Israel portrayals make debates related to Israel very un-nuanced, the director has in a blatant way contributed to the tendency to relativize the Holocaust and the genocide of the Jews," the letter said.

"As the center's own research shows, demonization of Israel leads to increasing antisemitism in Norway. Trivialization of the Holocaust is, as is well-known, defined as antisemitism."

Israel Between Peace and the Sword

The choices the region will face after the Iran-US-Israel War, and does international law have anything to do with them.

Published in Swedish Svenska Dagbladet: Israel måste alltid ha svärdet redo | David Stavrou | SvD Ledare

The Swedish discourse on the war in Iran has been dominated by the question of its legality. In recent weeks, international law scholars, academics, politicians, and columnists have explained why the American and Israeli attack is “illegal under international law.” There is much to say about this reasoning, but a reasonable question is what the point really is. In the real world, the legality of war matters very little, because international law, in general, has hardly had any real significance over the past decades.

The main reason is simply that it doesn't work. International law has been used by some of the world’s worst despots, from Gaddafi to Assad, to delay international action against their crimes, and when it was finally used for intervention—in many cases, it made the situation even worse and led to more violence and failed states.

International law has also given legitimacy to regimes such as Qatar and Somalia, which have gained seats on the UN Human Rights Council despite their total lack of such rights. Terrorist organizations have used it in their propaganda to avoid the consequences of their actions, and China’s and Russia’s veto rights in the UN Security Council ensure that aggressive dictators go unpunished.

“If the U.S. illegally invades other countries, Russia will do the same” is a common argument against the American offensive. But the truth is rather the opposite: Russia did not wait for the Americans to attack Georgia or Ukraine, and—like Turkey in Syria, Azerbaijan in Armenia, and Eritrea in Ethiopia—has ignored international law for decades. No country is waiting for Israel or the U.S. to legitimize their actions according to the “law of the jungle”.

For a country that has not been at war since 1814, the question of the legality of military interventions may seem like the most important one. Theoretically, even a superpower like the U.S. should be concerned with issues of limiting its global power. But for a country like Israel, which is constantly threatened by real enemies who want to annihilate it and kill its population, this question appears fairly academic.

There is, however, another question that from an Israeli perspective is extremely important. It is simple but crucial, and it should concern other countries as well—it is not whether the war is legal, but whether it is effective. Or more broadly: can military power by itself solve Israel’s problems with Iran and other enemies?

“When all you have is a hammer,” as the well-known saying goes, “every problem looks like a nail.” Israel undoubtedly has a powerful hammer. Could it be that the country has become accustomed to solving all its problems with it? Previously, Israel used many forms of power to strengthen its security and international standing. Diplomats engaged in creating complex alliances, its soft power included outstanding achievements in culture, art, agriculture, science, and technology, and governments were willing to participate in peace negotiations and consider compromises.

The Hamas massacre on October 7 and Iran’s persistence in combining nuclear ambitions with threats to wipe Israel off the map changed all of this. The Israeli foreign service has been marginalized; the country’s artists and scientists are boycotted around the world, and its enemies are blown to pieces rather than invited to ceremonies on the White House lawn. Considering that many of Israel’s enemies are ruthless killers, this is hardly surprising. Anyone who sees value in human life should not shed tears for people like Hassan Nasrallah, Yahya Sinwar, and Ali Khamenei. But do military operations improve reality if they are not accompanied by other measures such as diplomacy, economic development, and new creative political alliances? This is not only an Israeli question. A new world order is taking shape before our eyes, and if we are not heading toward total anarchy, the question of limiting military power and understanding what it can and cannot achieve is crucial.

One indication is the situation in Gaza. After more than two years of extensive military force and enormous destruction, the reality is that Hamas not only still exists, it is armed and controls many state functions. In Lebanon, Israel may have achieved significant military successes against Hezbollah, but the Israeli are still spending far too much time in bomb shelters, and despite everything, Hezbollah is still alive and kicking. Both militarily and politically.

Israelis are once again deprived of basic necessities—schools are closed, workplaces shut down, flights canceled, thousands have lost relatives, been forced from their homes, and suffered injuries and trauma. Not to mention that Israel is deeply divided on issues concerning its democracy, which can only be resolved when the shooting stops. Meanwhile, Israel has also, without justification, become the punching bag of the international community. All the world’s power seems to be of little use in solving this.

And then there is Iran. Now that the war has begun, it should, for the sake of both Iranians and Israelis, end with a regime change—and no regime change is possible without the use of force. The Iranian people themselves, who ultimately must liberate themselves, have asked for foreign intervention, and giving it to them is the right thing to do. But what then?

“From the moment we decided that only here, in the land of Israel, could the Jewish state arise, we accepted that more than a hundred million people from the Arab world, from the Arab nations, and from the Palestinians would be our neighbors,” said Israel’s former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin a few years before he was assassinated in 1995. “There are now only two possibilities: either a serious and determined effort is made to achieve peace—peace and security—or the sword will always rule.” In the 1990s, Rabin chose the first option, but since then, leaders across the region, including Israeli leaders, have developed a dependence on using force. Perhaps even an adiction.

When the war in Iran is over, Israel will face a choice. Previously, the country combined pragmatic diplomacy, careful alliance-building, and visionary openings toward the Arab world. In a region like the Middle East, this is risky. Israel will always need to keep a sword ready, but with security guarantees and economic support instead of anachronistic laws and self-righteous moralism from other countries, peace may once again become an option.

Can Swedish journalists understand the chaos, suffering, and fear of war

When two Israeli soldiers visited Stockholm, their story was misunderstood, writes Israeli journalist David Stavrou.

Published in Kvartal: https://kvartal.se/erikhogstrom/artiklar/svenska-journalister-forstar-inte-de-israeliska-soldaterna/cG9zdDo2MTgxMg

Two young Israeli soldiers recently visited Stockholm together with an activist from Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organization that collects and publishes testimonies from Israeli veterans and, in many cases, acts as a whistleblower by exposing alleged human rights violations and war crimes. The Swedish visit was organized in collaboration with the Christian aid organization Diakonia, which arranged interviews with the Swedish press (SVT, Dagens ETC, Dagens Arena, and Jewish Chronicle). In the interviews, the soldiers used pseudonyms, and their faces were not shown.

In some of the publications, the interviews were presented as evidence supporting the gravest accusations against Israel. For example, Dagens ETC wrote: “The serious allegations have been dismissed as Hamas propaganda by commentators like Alice Teodorescu Måwe. But everything is now confirmed by Israeli soldiers.”

In the interviews, the soldiers reportedly said things like, “we were ordered to shoot all Palestinians we considered ‘military-age men’” and “we used Palestinian men as human shields.” Other claims included that many buildings were destroyed in Gaza and that, during the first weeks of the war, there was a lack of rules of engagement. Later, the soldiers said, rules were introduced, but they were weak and not always applied. As a result, unarmed men were shot.

They also reported that journalists and healthcare workers were considered legitimate targets, even if they themselves did not participate in such incidents. The two soldiers also described a discourse that dehumanized Palestinians.

Many Israelis have strong objections to Breaking the Silence. They argue that this type of testimony contributes to hatred of Israel, causes the country to be treated unfairly, and that even if the reports are true, they should be discussed domestically rather than in a hostile international stage.

Of course, Swedish journalists do not need to concern themselves with this—but it can help to understand the context. Many Swedes would likely raise an eyebrow if Swedish organizations on the political fringe were setting the agenda for Sweden’s image abroad. In this case, the soldiers are telling an important story—the problem is that the Swedish press misunderstood it.

A key issue concerns how to distinguish between different types of armed forces. Traditionally, there is a difference between terrorists or non-state actors who use violence against civilians and state-controlled armies with formal military forces, command structures, and legal frameworks. That definition is largely irrelevant for Israelis because Hamas is a hybrid actor. Although the organization uses terrorist methods, its military branch—the al-Qassam Brigades—is structured like an army, with battalions and brigades, elite units, command chains, and modern weapons systems. During the war, this was also supported by high-tech disinformation campaigns, a financial empire of global investments, leaders living luxuriously outside the region, and alliances with some of the world’s most tyrannical regimes.

This paints the Israeli soldiers’ testimony in a very specific colour since Hamas, despite its military structure, is not bound by international law. Its militants can behead, rape, and execute civilians, burn people alive, and take children as hostages—with or without uniforms—while exploiting its other source of power – the power of sovereignty, and the civilian control the organisation holds in Gaza. Expecting Israel not to act against individuals simply because they are not in uniform in this asymmetric conflict may be understandable, but it is hardly surprising that the reality forces terrible dilemmas and tragic decisions.

The Israeli soldiers confirm that Israel, despite the genocidal nature of the Hamas attack against it, at least tried to maintain some form of legal framework. They say civilians were evacuated, leaflets were dropped as warnings, orders were given not to shoot women and children, and no-go zones were established in order to limit Israel's massive firepower. Using human shields is obviously illegal and should be punished. But the claim that journalists and healthcare workers are always protected in a reality where Hamas has been shown to use both journalistic and medical infrastructure for attacks on Israeli civilians is detached from reality.

Israel claims that intercepted communications show Hamas used ambulances to transport fighters, weapons, and equipment. Hamas also hid weapons and command centers in hospitals, schools, mosques, and private homes. The IDF has released images that allegedly confirm this. Furthermore, at least three civilian hostages—Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv—were reportedly held in a family home in Gaza where the son was a journalist and the father a doctor. There are also allegations that so-called freelance journalists were embedded in Hamas units on October 7 and documented the massacre for propaganda purposes.

The fact that Hamas controlled the Gaza Strip with an iron grip for years means that almost everything in Gaza effectively became part of the effort to destroy Israel. When the soldiers say they were told “everything is a military target,” this is viewed as condemning evidence against Israel—but in reality, it is not far from the truth.

International law recognizes these complex circumstances. While it may seem unfair to those unaccustomed to war, under the Geneva Conventions civilian structures—including hospitals—can lose their protection if they are used for military purposes. Even unarmed combatants and civilians participating in hostilities can, under certain circumstances, be considered legitimate targets. This is not what Israel claims—it is how international law works.

The reality described by the Israeli soldiers is horrific. Some of it, such as the use of human shields, also appears illegal. It can and should be discussed. It can and should be used for journalistic purposes and, hopefully, ultimately, for reconciliation when the heartbreaking testimonies from both sides become part of a healing process. That said, nothing in what the soldiers said in Sweden confirms allegations of genocide or deliberate starvation of civilians. Using these stories to imply that these horrific accusations are true is an abuse of the witnesses and their experiences.

Finally, there is one more aspect to consider. Being scared, wanting revenge, and not adhering to strict moral ideals under fire is natural in armed conflict. So too are remorse and shame. The Israeli soldiers who came to Stockholm were brave enough to share this with the world. But a reasonable question to pose to Diakonia, which organized the visit, is: Where is the Palestinian Breaking the Silence? Where are the remorseful Hamas fighters? Where are the Islamic Jihad militants ashamed of massacring Israeli civilians and now revealing their actions as “deeply immoral and devastating to our neighbors,” as one of the Israeli activists put it? Are these ignored by Diakonia—or do they simply not exist?

Is Israel on its way to the Middle Ages

The Swedish right should support courageous Israeli leaders who oppose the government’s reactionary impulses and fight for democratic values.

Published in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet: https://www.svd.se/a/wr8JEM/netanyahu-tar-israel-mot-medeltiden

The ceasefire which has been in effect in Gaza for several months has given Israelis and Palestinians an opportunity to reflect on their next steps, and to begin rebuilding and recovering after two of the most difficult years in the region’s history. Although Israel is slowly disappearing from the international headlines, it remains important to examine what is actually taking place in its political arena. If there's anything to learn from recent history it's that what happens there will influence global politics for many years to come.

One of the war’s results is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently on trial for corruption, is doing everything he can to control the historical narrative of the war and avoid taking responsibility for Israel’s failure on October 7. Instead, he places the blame on the security services and his political opponents. He refuses to establish an independent official inquiry commission and is doing his utmost to replace Israel’s military and legal elite with loyal officials. These changes may help Netanyahu evade accountability for the charges against him. But for his coalition partners—far-right, fundamentalist, and ultranationalist parties—they are a means to a broader goal: undermining Israel’s liberal democracy.

For example, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, is discussing a bill that would expand state control over the media. The proposal would replace existing regulatory bodies with a new authority whose members are appointed by the government—effectively enabling political control over broadcast content. The bill has drawn criticism from the government’s legal adviser, who warned that it threatens freedom of the press. It is hardly surprising that the same attorney general is among those the government is attempting to remove.

Because Israel is a democratic country, many Israelis are demonstrating against these proposals and other government measures. In recent months, however, many protesters have claimed that the police are acting in ways they did not previously. They report arbitrary arrests and increased use of force, including stun grenades and mounted riot police.

The minister responsible for this is Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right politician previously convicted of incitement and support for terrorism. While he is busy consolidating control over the police within Israel, another minister, Bezalel Smotrich, is consolidating control over the West Bank. Smotrich is laying the groundwork for potential annexation and is taking no action against the growing violence perpetrated by extremist settlers.

Netanyahu himself has recently reaffirmed his intention to continue pursuing the so-called judicial reform which many in Israel describe as a judicial overhaul, as it threatens the fundamental principles of the rule of law and the separation of powers, weakens the independence of the courts, and risks undermining democracy. The issue has now returned to the parliamentary agenda and in addition, efforts to limit the powers of the attorney general and the Supreme Court are being resumed. Another bill currently under discussion would introduce the death penalty for terrorist offenses—formally to prevent Hamas and other groups from taking Israelis hostage in order to exchange them for convicted terrorists, but there are also those motivated simply by revenge.

If the death penalty does not sound like a sufficiently reactionary reform, the Knesset has even discussed the conservative Jewish concept of shmirat negiah—the obligation for a man and a woman who are not married to each other to refrain from physical contact. It is not an official legislative proposal, at least not yet. But the mere fact that it is being discussed alarms liberal and secular Israelis—and rightly so.

Swedes have always had a deep interest in Israel. This can have both positive and negative effects. To understand whether Sweden’s voice can contribute something meaningful in this context, we should examine the country’s current discourse on Israel.

The political left in Sweden has unfortunately totaly lost its bearings. Many of its supporters have embraced Hamas’ narrative of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This does not necessarily mean they support terrorism, but the view of Israel as a settler-colonial project that should be boycotted and opposed regardless of its policies or leadership has spread from a radical minority into mainstream politics. Even established political parties have begun discussing the dangerous idea of a one-state solution.

A one-state solution would either mean the end of the Jewish state—which even the Swedish left previously supported—or plunge the entire region into an even worse bloodbath than what we have witnessed over the past two years.

Equally dangerous is the stance of Sweden’s populist right. Supporting Israel because its current leaders appear to use methods similar to those of authoritarian, illiberal regimes, or because they see Israel as a symbol of a struggle against Islam, is both misguided and harmful. It is also a betrayal of the Israelis who are fighting for a democratic, liberal, and peaceful future.

This year, both Swedes and Israelis are heading to the polls. If Sweden still wishes to exert a positive influence on Israel (and on the Palestinians, for that matter), Swedish supporters of the left should cooperate with Israeli artists, entrepreneurs, researchers, and academics who are independent and often in opposition to the government, rather than the easy and intellectually lazy solution of boycotting and margenelizing them.

The Swedish right should support courageous Israeli leaders who oppose the government’s reactionary impulses and fight for democratic values, rather than backing corrupt leaders and extremist parties that are dragging Israel back toward the Middle Ages. Any other approach amounts to rewarding both Hamas and Jewish extremists and for those who live in the region, it is yet another step on the road to hell.

Medelhavsmuseet's Selective History

When it comes to the past, Medelhavsmuseet (The Swedish Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities) largely ignores Israel, but when it comes to the present the museum presents only different shades of the same narrative, one that excludes a balanced, mainstream Israeli perspective. This in itself is not necessarily a problem. However, since public funds are being used and this is all payed for by tax-payers money, why not invest in presenting all sides of the story? Are Israelis so dehumanized that their pain, loss, and sacrifice are not considered worthy of being told?

Published in Swedish in Svenska Dagbladet: https://www.svd.se/a/K8Bn37/medelhavsmuseets-selektiva-historia

The lecture hall at Medelhavsmuseet was full on September 4th. The evening seminar which took place there was called "Repair, Return and Reconstruction for Palestine’s Decolonized Future", and in case the message wasn’t clear enough from the name, during most of the evening there was a photograph of Gaza and a slogan in Arabic and English projected on the screen behind the panel members. The slogan read: “Glory to Gaza”.

The seminar itself wasn’t exactly intellectually challenging and the message was pretty straight forward. When Israel was mentioned by all speakers it was associated with very specific words. Genocide, occupation, oppression, destruction, starvation, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment and settler-colonialism were some of the favourites. There was also a consensus about the Palestinian reaction to the Israeli aggression. Here the popular words were: education, culture, conservation, de-colonization, renovation and restoration. Listening to the panel members it sounded like Palestinian resistance is all about Mahmoud Darwish poems, architecture podcasts and a struggle for free press.

In an hour and a half of debate there was nothing about Palestinian terror or violence, there were no suicide bombings or rockets, Hamas wasn’t mentioned and October 7th was just the date when the current Israeli offensive started. Since all panel members were engaged in architecture and restoration and apparently very well acquainted with Gaza, it was interesting that the immense military underground tunnel infrastructure, a remarkable architectural achievement in itself, was not mentioned. There was also no mention of another kind of physical destruction – the one of Israeli communities. No destroyed and abandoned kibbutzim, no apartments demolished by Qassam rockets and no homes burned to the ground with entire families still inside. There were no hostages, no executions and no organized rape and sexual violence. The whole event felt like a motivational inspirational gathering for activists, where all the speakers clearly presented a Palestinian narrative, and many in the audience were members of the so-called "pro-Palestinian" movement. Some wore kaffiyehs, a couple of them even had red triangles (a Hamas symbol) on them.

In itself, all this is completely legitimate. In a democracy, people are free to organize whatever seminar they wish. What is, however, somewhat troubling is that Medelhavsmuseet is part of a government agency (Statens museer för världskultur) funded by taxpayers, with tens of millions of Swedish Crowns each year. When Rani Kasapi, Head of Content and Learning at Världskulturmuseerna, opened the seminar, she also mentioned that other institutions were also involved in organizing it: the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI), the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII), and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. All of these are also fully or partially funded by Swedish taxpayers, raising the question – why should funds that could be spent on education and culture for the benefit of all be used for a one-sided, highly political event based on foreign policy propaganda?

Perhaps, the idea was to have another event to balance the message and show another side and a different narrative. And indeed, on October 7th, a very symbolic and politically charged date, another event was planned by the museum. This time the title was: What’s Happening in Israel Now? (Vad händer i Israel nu?). In a perfect world, this could have been the the missing piece, the event that shows that the situation is more complex than just propaganda. But the world isn’t perfect. According to publications, the event had only one speaker – Göran Rosenberg. The same Rosenberg who only a few months earlier described Israel as a "morally dead project" and questioned its future existents in its current form. It’s as if the museum invited an anti-vaxer to lecture about the importance of vaccinations. Was it really so hard to find another voice to describe the situation in Israel? One who at least believes in its future?
Medelhavsmuseet has hosted more events about the region in the last couple of years — for example, there was a book talk with Cecilia Uddén, one of Swedish media’s most critical voices when it comes to Israel. There was also a UI event featuring several Israeli left-wing activists. But the bigger picture is that, aside from rare exceptions, Medelhavsmuseet largely presents different shades of the same narrative, one that excludes a balanced, mainstream Israeli perspective. This in itself is not necessarily a problem. However, if public funds are being used, why not invest in presenting all sides of the story? Are Israelis so dehumanized that their pain, loss, and sacrifice are not considered worthy of being told?

Looking a bit deeper, it’s obvious that Medelhavsmusset doesn’t ignore the Israeli perspective only when it comes to the current conflict. For some reason, it ignores Israel’s existence all together (apart from occasionally mentioning it as a colonial bully destructing the fascinating, authentic and noble people of the orient). Israel as a modern state and the ancient Jewish entities in the Eastern Mediterranean like the Kingdoms of Jehuda and The Northern Kingdom of Israel are a treasure of history, archaeology and ancient culture. They’re the origin story of Christianity and Western civilization and a fascinating story of cultural, social and linguistic revival. Still, in the last twenty years of exhibitions, it seems like Medelhavsmuseet hasn’t had a single exhibition presenting Israeli or Jewish culture and history. I spoke with two historians who have studied this in detail. One of them said that “ancient Jewish history is almost completely erased from the museum’s portrayal of the ancient Mediterranean region”. The other said that for historical reasons, the museum focuses on Egypt and Cyprus, which is fine, but even when those cultures had strong connections to Jews in the region, those connections are usually not mentioned, and even on the rare occasions that they are the name Israel never is.

And they're right. Medelhavsmuseet has presented many exhibitions about Egypt, Greece, Rome, Syria, Cyprus, Turkey – and even non-Mediterranean countries such as Iraq. In fact, the only recent exhibition that touched on Israel was “Nakba,” which according to the Jewish Central Council was highly one-sided and sparked debate over whether the museum was pursuing a political agenda. The museum responded that “it is not a historical exhibition, but a small audio exhibition with stories”. When representatives from the Jewish Central Council met with the superintendent of Statens museer för världskultur regarding this, their concerns were not taken seriously.

There’s no doubt that the story of the Nakba should be told. It’s an important part of the region’s history. But if this was only a “small audio exhibition with stories”, where is the next audio exhibition with the other stories from the same war – for example, those about Holocaust survivors who were killed in the battle field after being freed from Auschwitz, or those about massacres of Jews that took place during the same time, or the ones about the Jordanians expelling the Jews from Jerusalem’s old town or the Egyptians illegally occupying Gaza?

During the debate with the Jewish Central Council, the museum mentioned one exhibition – Egypt’s Jews (Egyptens judar), perhaps as one with a more “Jewish narrative”. But the truth is that even when the exhibition explains how Egyptian Jews were attacked, harassed, arrested and expelled in the 1950s and 60s, it’s clear that the message is that this is a direct result of Zionism. The exhibition explains how for 3,000 years Jews were “totally integrated in the surrounding society” (helt integrerade i det omgivande samhället) and only when the UN decided to “divide Palestine” and the 1948 war broke out, Egyptians started “anti-Zionists riots” and resisted “foreign influence”. These texts are a wonderful example of verbal acrobatics. There’s no Egyptian antisemitism, no Muslim Brotherhood (the mother movement of Hamas) promoting genocidal racism against Jews, just an unfortunate mixing up (ihopblandning) of “Jews” and “Zionists”. This makes sense since one of the exhibition’s production partners was Magda Haroun, Head of the Jewish Community Council in Egypt and a vocal opponent of Israel who claims that Zionism is a racist movement. Interestingly, the exhibition which mentions the wars between Israel and Egypt, doesn’t discuss Egyptian President Saadat’s historic recognition of Israel and the resulting Israel-Egypt peace agreement. One can only assume that the reason is that if the museum tells its visitors about Egypt recognizing Israel, this may lead to a demand that Medelhavsmuseet does the same.

No Löfven, Hamas isn't Israel's Fault

Published in Swedish in Kvartal: https://kvartal.se/erikhogstrom/artiklar/nej-lofven-hamas-ar-inte-israels-fel/cG9zdDoyMjc1NA

A popular proverb says that a half-truth is a whole lie. The latest episode of SVT’s Utrikesbyrån about Hamas was a good example of that. That does not mean it wasn’t interesting. It was. Nor is there any doubt that the three participants — former Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, political scientist Marco Nilsson and Middle East analyst Bitte Hammargren — knew what they were talking about. But when it came to the analysis of Hamas, we were given only a half-truth.

The questions the presenter Rebecca Randhawa asked were: what is left of Hamas, will they lay down their arms, and who will govern Gaza. The first and the third questions are almost impossible to answer. Even Israeli intelligence does not know what remains of Hamas’s military capability, and Gaza’s future governance depends on a complicated geopolitical process. The second question, however, can be answered based on a deep understanding of what Hamas is, the choices it has made in the past, and what its ideological and political DNA is.

According to Löfven, Hamas’s power is the result of a paradox. Despite being one of Israel’s greatest enemies, its power originated with Israel’s political leadership. “Such an organization receives support (from Qatar, for example) simply because Israel wants to avoid the Palestinian Authority (PA) gaining any power.” Hammargren agreed and said that Hamas was a political asset for Israel. “Netanyahu’s line was that by letting Hamas grow in Gaza we don’t have to hear about a Palestinian statehood,” she said. This is a common analysis and it is partly true. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders do indeed oppose a two-state solution. Because of this, his strategy was to weaken the PA, and many argue that one of the ways he did this was by allowing Hamas to grow. But this is only half the truth.

The other half, and the real reason Hamas rose to power and was able to retain it, is much simpler. The source of Hamas’s power is support from large parts of the Palestinian people. Even now, after two years of destruction and death that are a direct consequence of Hamas’s decision to massacre Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, Hamas is still supported by many Palestinians. The international support from Qatar and Iran that Löfven and Hammargren mentioned is also not hard to understand. Iran’s regime has a long-term goal of eliminating “the Zionist entity,” and Qatar built its international position on supporting its ideological Muslim Brotherhood allies. Sure, Netanyahu miscalculated Hamas’s capacity and misread its intentions, but it was not he who made Hamas’s ideology popular, and it was not he who turned Qatar and Iran into dangerous regional destabilizing powers.

But where is Hamas heading? Utrikesbyrån’s two-and-a-half-minute clip tried to provide background. According to the clip, “Hamas removed the demand that Israel be destroyed, but still does not recognize the state of Israel.” This is not even a half-truth. Hamas is absolutely committed to the destruction of Israel. Yes, it created a new charter for foreign audiences, because the old document contained antisemitic propaganda that was not particularly popular on university campuses and in some Western circles. But even the new charter demands “all of Palestine” from the river to the sea, it does not accept the Oslo Accords or the two-state solution, and it still endorses “armed resistance,” which has been a decisive part of Hamas’s nature long before October 7. That includes blowing up buses and restaurants full of civilians as well as kidnapping, torturing and murdering Jews of all ages, genders and backgrounds. One interesting thing Utrikesbyrån did not mention is that Hamas activists have on several occasions been arrested in Europe for planning attacks on “Jewish targets.” Worth mentioning if anyone took the “new charter” seriously.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the violence, Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006 in both the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians are not blind or politically incapable — they knew exactly what they were voting for. According to Utrikesbyrån’s experts, Netanyahu could have fought Hamas by strengthening the PA. It’s an interesting theory. Only problem is that it’s not true. Not during the years when Hamas was building its reign of terror, anyway. The reasons are that Netanyahu was not Israel’s prime minister at that time. Between 1999 and 2009 the prime ministers of Israel were Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. The first was an outspoken advocate for a two-state solution, the second ended the occupation of Gaza, and the third was probably the one who offered the PA the most generous territorial compromise. Hamas was not impressed. It continued to build the fundamentalist, jihadist, genocidal faction within the Palestinian nationalist movement. Hamas did not need Netanyahu for this. It was fully capable of doing it on its own, while many Israelis were still considering peace and reconciliation.

Utrikesbyrån downplayed all of this. In the program there were no blown-up buses, no tunnels, rockets, high-tech international propaganda campaigns or brutal executions of Palestinian “collaborators.” October 7 was only mentioned in passing, as another point on the timeline. No hostages, no burned neighborhoods, no executed families. This is not a complaint that they “forgot October 7,” but a critique of incomplete analysis. How can one answer the question about Hamas’s intentions without taking into account that the organization recruited thousands of people who were willing not only to kill but also to commit gang rapes and sexualized torture in the name of Allah?

Netanyahu can and should be criticized for many things, but not for this. Sure, he did not destroy Hamas before October 7, and through his incompetence and corruption he may have contributed to the opposite. Israelis should hold him accountable for that. But this is far from the cause of the catastrophe. Hamas began building its advanced military capability long before Netanyahu, it remains standing, and many Palestinians still support it. Let us imagine that Netanyahu had decided to wipe out Hamas back in 2014. Now that we know that not even the destruction of Gaza did the job, would Stefan Löfven have supported an Israeli offensive on that scale? Would the Obama administration have allowed it? Would the UN have accepted it? Of course not. Everyone can complain about Netanyahu and everyone can criticize Hamas, but in the end — whose responsibility is it to eliminate Hamas, and who will support such an effort?

It is obvious that Stefan Löfven in no way supports Hamas. In Utrikesbyrån he spoke very clearly about the necessity of a political process with a reformed Palestinian Authority moving toward a two-state solution. But putting the blame for the situation on the Israeli government while ignoring Hamas’s inherently genocidal nature is a classic half-truth. It leads people to believe in conspiracy theories about secret Israeli involvement in the massacre of its own citizens, and more importantly — it shifts the focus to the wrong side. To reach a lasting ceasefire it would be wiser to focus on the “de‑Hamasification” of Gaza and support moderate forces on both sides that can help their communities recover from this two-year trauma and build a future together.

Sailing with Fanatics

As Swedish Member of Parliament Lorena Delgado Varas and activist Greta Thunberg make their way to Gaza as part of the so-called Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), many Swedes assume that their intentions are good. However, the reality behind the movement they are actively supporting is as far as can be imagined from humanitarian, non-violent, peaceful activism.

Published in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet:
https://www.svd.se/a/lw6anA/lorena-delgado-varas-och-greta-thunberg-seglar-i-daligt-sallskap

The images of destruction and suffering from Gaza, combined with statements published by the flotilla's organizers, have created an image of brave and kind-hearted activists, willing to pay a heavy personal price to deliver humanitarian aid and draw the world’s attention to Gaza. On its website, GSF describes itself as “a coalition of everyday people – organizers, humanitarians, doctors, artists, clergy, lawyers, and seafarers – who believe in human dignity and the power of nonviolence.” They also emphasize that their loyalty lies with “justice, freedom, and the sanctity of human life.”

But the reality behind GSF is far removed from the idealistic image presented to the public.

Less than three months ago, a meeting took place at Hamas’ headquarters in Algeria. Participants included representatives of the Global Sumud Flotilla and leaders of the movements that murdered, raped, tortured, and burned hundreds of Israeli civilians on October 7th – and many more before that. Among those present were Youssef Hamdan, Hamas' representative in Algeria, and Nader al-Qaisi, a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). This was no secret meeting. Despite the continued portrayal of the flotilla by Swedish media as a peace initiative with humanitarian aims, publicly available material reveals concrete links between GSF and some of the world’s most notorious terrorist organizations. All it takes to uncover these connections is a basic knowledge of Arabic and a quick search through social media.

In one photo published by Nabil Chennoufi, a spokesperson for GSF who frequently shares extremist violent propaganda on social media, two members of the flotilla’s steering committee – Wael Nawar and Hayfa Mansouri – can be seen smiling and wearing keffiyehs with Hamas symbols, alongside leaders of the terrorist organization in Algeria. The caption says the meeting focused on the flotilla’s progress, its positive impact, and its connection to the "Palestinian resistance." In a second photo, a third steering committee member, Marouan Ben Guettaia, is seen meeting with Hamas leader Hamdan.

It’s important to stress that Greta Thunberg is not merely a regular passenger on one of the flotilla’s boats. GSF’s own website showed her as a member of the steering committee, alongside the aforementioned individuals. For some reason, her name and picture suddenly disappeared last Thursday.

Another committee member is Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila, who has openly expressed his admiration for the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. On social media, Ávila shared how he was inspired as a young man after meeting Nasrallah and described him as “an important anti-colonial figure who defeated Zionist and imperialist armies multiple times.” Earlier this year, Ávila attended Nasrallah’s funeral in Beirut – a massive demonstration attended by tens of thousands of people chanting “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.” Ávila was impressed, writing: “Today I saw thousands of new freedom fighters.”

As a reminder, it’s worth noting that Hezbollah is a militant Shia Muslim organization allied with Iran, Russia, North Korea, and Shia militias in Iraq. It is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, and is responsible for numerous terror attacks and kidnappings around the world – financed by Iran’s Islamist regime and the narcotics trade.

But it seems Ávila is not loyal to only one terrorist organization. In a photo, he is seen posing next to convicted PFLP terrorist Leila Khaled, with a green heart emoji and a Palestinian flag. The caption reads: “Today I met one of the people I admire most in the entire world.” Khaled’s notoriety, it should be remembered, is not based on “human dignity and the power of nonviolent action,” but on her involvement in the hijackings of TWA Flight 840 and El Al Flight 219 in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Another member of the GSF steering committee is Muhammad Nadir Al-Nuri Kamaruzaman, head of the GSF Southeast Asia coalition. He is also the founder of the Malaysian organization MyAqsa Defenders and CEO of the NGO Cinta Gaza Malaysia. Both organizations have expressed support for Hamas and have been linked to financing Hamas-run infrastructure in Gaza. Among other things, Cinta Gaza has published an e-book glorifying Yahya Ayyash, known as Hamas’s top bombmaker and responsible for numerous mass-casualty attacks in Israel during the 1990s. MyAqsa Defenders has also hosted a livestream event with Muslim Imran, whose name has appeared on Hamas channels as an official Hamas spokesperson.

Despite this information being openly and proudly published by those involved, neither Greta Thunberg nor Lorena Delgado Varas have been publicly questioned in Sweden for their participation in what clearly appears to be a well-organized, international operation with strong ties to terrorist groups. Sure – as citizens of a democratic country, they have every right to take part in whatever Mediterranean adventures they choose. But when those journeys are part of a network led by individuals with proven links to organizations responsible for massacres of civilians, there is a responsibility to investigate, question, and report.

It seems that behind the flowery rhetoric about human rights, humanitarian aid, and nonviolence hides a movement whose leadership praises antisemitic, religiously fanatical, chauvinistic, and ultranationalist violent actors. By participating in this initiative, Thunberg and Delgado Varas help legitimize forces that threaten democracy, gender equality, freedom of expression, and the very idea of a peaceful civil society. Despite their public image as champions of justice and solidarity, the facts suggest something quite different — in reality, Thunberg and Delgado Varas are supporting right-wing extremists.

Are Israelis Supposed to Just Pack Their Bags and Leave?

In an article in SvD this week, Göran Rosenberg shared his concerns about the Jewish world. Many, myself included, share some of his worries — for example, concern over Israel’s extremist settler movement and the situation in Gaza. But several of his claims are dangerous and misleading.

Published in Svenska Dagbladet: https://www.svd.se/a/yEBLgr/david-stavrou-goran-rosenbergs-satt-att-tala-om-israel-ar-farligt

"The Israel project is morally dead," writes Rosenberg. The project, not the country. That’s an extremely important nuance. If Israel is a project, then it can either succeed or fail, in which case, like any other failed project, it loses its right to exist. But Israel is not a project; it is a country. A country with a political right and left, babies and pensioners, gangsters and hipsters, programmers and midwives, people sitting in traffic jams and people demonstrating against the government. That is the entire point of Zionism — Jews have the right to be like any other people and have an unconditional right to self-determination. Israel should not be the only country in the world whose existence is conditional, and the right to self-determination of its people can't be dependent on their ability to meet Rosenberg’s moral standards.

What are Israelis supposed to do now that "the project has failed"? Pack their bags and leave? Vanish into thin air? Go up in smoke? That’s exactly the propaganda Hamas spreads through Western protest movements — if Israeli Jews are so morally bankrupt, then it’s not about regime change or electing a new government, as it is with Russians or Iranians. Instead, the Jews must disappear. Or die.

It's no coincidence that Israel's worst enemies — those who want to wipe it off the face of the earth — refuse to acknowledge it as a state among states. The Iranian regime calls Israel 'the Zionist regime' or 'the occupying regime of Jerusalem'. Hamas speaks of 'the Zionist entity' or 'the occupation', and the Houthis in Yemen refer to 'the Zionist enemy'. Always an abstract creature — an entity, a project — never a state. Even Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were allowed to be states. But not Israel.

Rosenberg writes that Israel’s “genocide in Gaza” is now putting Jews in other countries into an “existential crisis” and that voices like his are being silenced. Besides the fact that he regularly writes in one of Sweden's main daily newspapers and is far from being silenced, there's a much more important falsehood in his claim. In fact, in a broader context, the opposite of what he writes is true — Israel, with all its sins, is the answer, not the problem (and the problem can be explained in one word – Auschwitz). Historically, there have been Jewish non-Zionist movements, but the reason most of them disappeared has nothing to do with silencing voices. It has to do with the fact that Zionism understood antisemitism better and offered a concrete answer based on international law. The other solutions vanished in the Holocaust. What alternative does Rosenberg propose? Another socialist utopia? Or should we return to the pogroms on European streets?

Then there’s the conflict with the Palestinians. Rosenberg is right that Israel has oppressed the Palestinians for decades and made every conceivable mistake. But the Palestinians have too. They are not the eternal victims Rosenberg sees them as, and their violence is not a natural "expression against oppression". The violence started long before Israel was founded — before the occupation, before the oppression — and much of it is imported. Just as Israel receives American support, the Palestinians received support from the Nazis in the 1940s, from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, and more recently from dictators and jihadists in Qatar, Iran, and Yemen — countries that have no territorial conflict with Israel, but still support fascist, chauvinistic, and corrupt Palestinian movements.

We can all enjoy philosophical discussions about the Jewish intellectual world, but the bigger problem right now is those who persistently blame Jews and Israelis for all the world’s problems. Some even build nuclear weapons to "wipe out the Zionist entity". It’s true that polarization within the Jewish world and anti-democratic tendencies in Israel are serious, but most Jews are more concerned about genocide-prone regimes that are after Jewish blood. Even if Rosenberg finds it uncomfortable or unpleasant, Israelis still have the right to face these challenges and build themselves a future.